General Government

The General Government was a German zone of occupation established in Poland on 12 October 1939, with Krakow serving as the capital. The zone was established after the invasion of Poland at the start of World War II, and the region was expanded to include western Ukraine and Belarus after Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941-1942. The end of the war three years after the expansion of General Government prevented Hitler from fulfilling his plan of settling the region with ethnic Germans and exterminating the Slavs, and the region was divided between the Polish People's Republic and the Ukrainian SSR of the Soviet Union.